


this is how we fall apart

by abyssith



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: ALL ABOARD THE ANGST TRAIN, Almost Kiss, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Based on a Tumblr Post, Breaking apart, Egobang - Freeform, Heavy Angst, Multi, Oblivious Danny, Pining, Pining Arin, Polygrumps, Possibly Unrequited Love, What Have I Done, not exactly a happy ending, recording sessions, sorta?, this is more sad than expected
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 19:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11858148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abyssith/pseuds/abyssith
Summary: It’s past midnight when his world begins to fall apart.Of course, he doesn’t know it yet. He can’t possibly.





	this is how we fall apart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [megarumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/megarumi/gifts).



> Based entirely on a Tumblr post made by megarumi (link to it on my blog here: https://overglorified-trash.tumblr.com/post/164407008743/megarumi-arin-and-danny-being-super-close-and). 
> 
> Title taken from Steven Universe song, "Here Comes A Thought", by Rebecca Sugar.

It’s past midnight when his world begins to fall apart.  
  
Of course, he doesn’t know it yet. He can’t possibly. It’s not even a future he could imagine, because all he knows is he’s texting Dan and his smile is huge and the phone is much too bright on his face in the darkness but he doesn’t care. Suzy’s snoring lightly beside him, completely unaware of her husband’s late night conversation. He’s distinctly aware of the heaviness behind his eyelids and of the 3:39 shining in bright red neon digits somewhere to his right on the bedside table. And still, Arin’s fingers fly across the tiny keyboard on his phone, continuing to reply as if they were standing face-to-face.  
  
**how long did it take to wash it all out?** Arin texts with a little chuckle in response to Dan’s lively retelling of how Brian had fallen backward onto a table and right on top of a jug of lemonade and a whole box of pastries at a recent party to evade a wasp.  
  
**I didn’t ask. I know he basically had to strip down, though,** is the response that appears in little more than five seconds after.  
  
Arin grins, feeling the muscles in his cheeks stretch as he rolls around on the bed, careful not to move too much, and tucks his head between his pillow and the mattress. **Send nudes,** he teases, rubbing his eyes and swallowing a yawn.  
  
**I’ll be sure to ask,** Dan assures him. An emoji beaming widely rapidly follows in pursuit.  
  
Arin sighs and that rebel yawn suddenly resurfaces, and soon he’s stretching and his eyes are drooping and he can’t really focus anymore. It’s an irritating struggle to find the energy to reply. **Hey man, I’m gonna head out,** he says, yawning again and blinking back the resulting wetness in his eyes. **I’ll see you tomorrow?** ~~~~  
  
**Course, big cat,** Dan responds. **We’re recording sonic unleashed again, right?**  
  
Arin snorts. **You bet your ass we are.**  
  
**Sweet. Love that game. GN buddy. Love you.**  
  
Arin blushes against his will at the kissing emoji at the end of Dan’s message, instinctively glancing at Suzy’s sleeping figure like he always does when that happens, and responds in a similar manner. He sends the same emoji after a moment’s thought. Then he turns his phone off and leans over the edge of the bed to plug it in, releasing it once he feels the single faint pulse in the device.  
  
He turns to face Suzy, staring at her tangled hair falling over her shoulder and over the pillow. Tilting his head, he reaches out and takes a wisp of it, playing with it absentmindedly. After a few seconds, he wonders why it’s not bouncing the way he expected it to. Then he remembers they’re not curls.  
  
He falls asleep less than two minutes later.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
“Man, I missed this game,” Dan sighs to his right, reclining back in the sofa.  
  
Arin gives him a skeptical look. “Why?”  
  
“I dunno. It’s like—dude, Sonic is just our baby, I guess. Super love hate relationship. It’s weird, y’know?” Dan gestures to the screen and pulls up the blanket around his chin in the same movement. “There’s just something…magical, about it, I think.”  
  
“Nah, bro. You just miss my rage,” Arin corrects him just as he screws up a combination and swings the remote the wrong way. “FUCKING—see? See? Like that.”  
  
Dan laughs, snorting into his hand. “Speak of the devil. Yeah, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”  
  
“I guess,” grumbles Arin, trying to find that muscle memory he had developed for this particular game. “Long enough I forgot how to fuckin’ punch.”  
  
“Oh—I believe in you, Arin,” Dan says all too easily, reaching out and clapping a hand on Arin’s shoulder. “You can do this.”  
  
Arin gives him a look that’s somewhere between _shut up_ and _you’re the death of me._ He hopes it’s more towards the former, because even though he’s gotten years to get used to Dan’s habit of affectionate verbal assurance and the occasional physical reminder, it still brings blood to his cheeks. “Thanks, man,” is all he says, focusing on splitting his mind again to concentrate on both the game and the person beside him. “So—you really did miss this game?”  
  
“Of course! I mean, okay, not for the plot, or execution—although, the graphics are pretty nice. Like, look at that.” Dan points at the screen again, motioning wildly to the backgrounds of the stage Arin is playing. “I think you might really enjoy it if you took the time to look at it.”  
  
“And the jazz music? Did you miss the jazz music?” Arin asks when it begins blasting a second later, the purple flame-looking walls appearing in-game to section him off and force him to fight a bunch of poorly designed enemies.  
  
“Shit—absolutely,” laughs Dan, hiccuping in the middle of it because Arin’s face is making him lose it. “In fact I think that I missed that particular bit the most.”  
  
“I swear to God, man, I had nightmares about that. Like, just that one BWA BA DA BA-DA-DA-DA in the very beginning.” Now Arin’s laughing too, but at least he’s getting back into the swing (quite literally) of things.  
  
Dan clutches his chest and cracks up even harder. “Fuck yeah, definitely. Just that ‘jazz.mp3’ file on repeat for 10 hours, right?”  
  
“Exactly,” says Arin, swinging wildly with the pair of remotes. “You really think that’s what they did?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You know—type in a command to keep a ten-second-long audio file on repeat until you kill everything?”  
  
“Maybe. I wouldn’t put it past whoever the fuck decided on the music. And—didn’t we have this conversation before? We definitely did,” Dan says, answering his own question.  
  
Arin shrugs, killing the last of whatever dark creatures the game conjured up. “You don’t wanna talk about the masterful polished work that was put into this shitty game?”  
  
“Not particularly.”  
  
“Me neither,” agrees Arin, sharing a look and another laugh with his friend. “So, okay. Um—say something interesting.”  
  
Dan pauses, just long enough for Arin to wonder what’s on his mind. He almost asks just that, noticing the peculiar expression that has for some reason crossed the older man’s face without warning, when Dan speaks before he can. “Well…okay, promise you won’t talk until I finish?”  
  
“Sure,” Arin says automatically. “What’s up?”  
  
“I, uh—” Dan drops into a whisper to pretend he’s sharing a secret. “I met someone.”  
  
And just like that, time stops.  
  
The moisture in Arin’s mouth disappears.  
  
“Come again?”  
  
Dan clears his throat and shrugs nonchalantly, pulling the blanket tighter again. “I—I’m not gonna say any names, but—yeah, man, I met a girl. Couple nights back, actually.”  
  
Arin’s so distracted right now, so distracted that he almost fucks up and misses a pole. “Fuck,” he barks, just barely grabbing it and saving himself from dying. He risks a look at Dan, panic filling his head. “You—you haven’t said anything—”  
  
“I know…I kinda wanted to wait, right, before I made any announcements.” He almost sounds apologetic, and he probably is. But Arin’s blood is still turning colder by the second. “Because—I meet tons of girls, so it’s never really a surprise when I say something like that.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arin chokes. And then, again, louder. “Yeah. So—” He swallows, trying to make his words sound less like a gasp and more like actual sentences. He doesn’t know what’s come over him, but he has all but forgotten how to speak. “So it wasn’t just some shitty one-night stand?” His fingers are squeezing the remotes so tight his knuckles are turning white. He doesn’t know why he’s asking these questions, doesn’t know why he _wants_ to know, because what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him. But Dan’s gonna tell him anyway and it hurts, it hurts, so he gets it over with.  
  
Dan doesn’t seem to notice, and his tone is just as light as it was before. “Right,” he responds. Arin notices with a stab of agony that there’s a bit of redness dusting the skin right underneath Dan’s eyes. “I mean, it was, at first, but then we talked and we exchanged numbers and shit. I—I really liked her, dude. I want to meet her again. She was pretty fucking cool. And hot. Can’t forget that.”  
  
“Of course,” Arin whispers. He can’t breathe—why can’t he breathe?  
  
“I might actually meet up with her after we wrap this up in a couple of hours. She said something about sandwiches, so…” Dan keeps talking, painfully oblivious to the man in shock next to him. Arin can’t hear him, can’t hear anything but the pounding of blood in his head that’s getting louder and louder with each passing moment.  
  
Something like static fills his ears, a fuzz that drowns out his best friend’s voice and the sounds of the game he’s eating shit at, and all at once Arin realizes he can’t feel his fingers. He sees the screen in front of him, but at the same time he can’t really _see_ it. He wonders why his vision is getting distorted and why there’s colors in places there shouldn’t be and why Sonic really does look like a blue blur. There’s pain, loads of it that’s stabbing his chest, like a thousand tiny needles using his heart as a pin cushion. He knows he hears something shatter deep inside of him, and an emptiness so deep and so wide begins to stretch out within his body. It sucks up everything— his awareness, his thoughts, his senses, his ability to breathe. A dark cloud sets over him and then Arin can’t think anymore, and he doesn’t know he closed his eyes until a tear splashes onto his upper lip.  
  
A sound tugs at the edge of his consciousness, a loud, frantic sound. It echoes louder and louder until Arin’s head clears with a rush of adrenaline that fills him with nausea, and he is pulled back to reality with a deep gasp. Dan is less than a foot away, one hand on his thigh and one hand on his arm, repeating Arin’s name with concern.  
  
Arin slowly turns to look him in the eye, making sure to keep his head angled so that Dan can’t see the tear that escaped. “Arin?” Dan asks, his brows creased with worry. “You alright there?”  
  
Arin opens his mouth, searching for words. He sees the alarm striking through Dan’s huge brown eyes and any initial thought of admitting how he really feels vanishes in an instant. No, he can’t say anything of the sort. He can’t let him know how torn he feels, how cold he has become. So he lies. “Yeah, shit. I’m sorry. Did I—” He turns to look at the game and realizes that he had run straight off of a ledge. Sonic had respawned, currently standing idle on screen. “Oh. Whoops. My bad.”  
  
Dan hasn’t let him go. “You wandered off, buddy.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I just got a little deep in thought.” Arin gently elbows Dan away, physically unable to stand the close proximity. Then he hesitates, seeing the deep frown still set on Dan’s face. Arin bites his lip and gathers his breath, mustering up all his willpower to flash him a convincing grin. “You gotta promise me that you’re gonna dance to that jazz music on your wedding day,” he makes himself joke, ignoring the tendrils of misery wrapping around his neck and constricting his throat and shortening his breath as he speaks.  
  
It seems to be the right thing to say, because the frown is immediately replaced by a smile of relief and a laugh. He can tell the tension in the air has lightened up, too, and Arin can finally breathe again, at least a little. And yet Dan’s laugh, a sound that has always soothed him and set him at ease, makes him tense up and feel that same prickly barbed wire twist around his heart. He furiously tells himself to do what makes Dan happy, whatever it takes to make him laugh. _I don’t matter,_ Arin whispers to himself, struggling to keep the smile and what he thinks is a laugh and not the sound of a dying cat. _Let Danny have this. God, let him have this. He needs to be happy._  
  
To his credit, Dan doesn’t mention the girl again during the rest of the recording, and as the minutes mount between the abrupt mental breakdown and where they are now, the pain alleviates just enough for Arin’s smile to become a little more genuine. But the cloud never goes away, and neither does the lump in his throat, no matter how many times he swallows. He doesn’t cry again, though, and that has to count for something. So does the fact that Dan doesn’t seem to catch on. And that’s okay, even though Arin knows it’s not. It has to be, however, for now, because Arin loves Dan so fucking much and that means he has to keep him happy and oblivious and giggling. Because when Dan laughs, Arin laughs, and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to function if Dan sees Arin sad. Because then Dan will start crying and that’ll be the last straw and Arin will lose it.  
  
So Arin keeps smiling.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
The following few days are hell on earth for Arin. The peace from the lack of mention of Dan’s apparent new girlfriend is broken less than 24 hours later when Dan texts him with an apology, telling him that he’ll be missing the next day’s recording to go out on a day trip with her. Arin drops his phone when he sees the text and crashes on the couch for a solid fifteen minutes, crying into a pillow until Suzy finds him and rouses him. “Hey…what’s going on?” she asks.  
  
“Menstrual cycle,” Arin immediately deadpans, which incites an instant laugh from his wife. But of course she doesn’t leave and she asks him again, to which he just shakes his head and covers his face with the pillow again.  
  
Suzy sighs and pushes it down his face enough to uncover his forehead and kiss him tenderly. “You tell me when you’re ready, okay, baby?” she whispers, rubbing his shoulder softly. “I worry about you when you get like this.”  
  
“I know,” he says, muffled by the pillow. “I will.”  
  
He doesn’t.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
He continues to put up the facade, eventually replying to Dan’s text and all the ones that come after it. He knows that with every lie he writes, he loses a bit of himself. It’s worth Dan’s happiness, though, so Arin makes himself keep doing it. Every “I’m missing recording today” receives a “you’re fine, man, just make your woman happy.” Every “her eyes are so blue, how is that possible” gets a “you deserve only the finest,” every “I’m so sorry I missed your text” is answered by “nah it’s cool; I know you’re busy.”  
  
It begins to reflect on his outer appearance, though, and Suzy begins to pester him again when the bags under his eyes get darker and darker each day. Arin always tells her off, crankier each time. He almost snaps at her for real one day, and the shock on her face followed by the hurt quickly makes Arin realize what he’s done. They embrace, they kiss, they exchange apologies, but Arin still refuses to tell Suzy what’s happening with him and Dan.  
  
His conversations with Dan begins to get shorter and shorter until the screen is almost completely blue with his side of the messages. Dan’s own responses are far more scattered than before, and the mere sight of it brings a mist over Arin’s eyes.  
  
If his personal life is a mess, though, then recording sessions become disasters. Arin can barely look at Dan anymore, and when he does, they’re always fleeting glances. On multiple occasions Dan tries to hold his gaze and Arin just tears his eyes away, casting them guiltily to the floor. The searching, confused dark mocha eyes that try to reach into his soul are far too much for Arin to handle. Their conversations during the sessions aren’t too bad, all things considered, but it’s certainly more forced than ever. They still laugh together, they still make jokes, but it soon becomes clear that Dan is the only one making an attempt at comedy. The gameplay gets astonishingly better, which is typically a positive thing, but in this case, it’s only a result of Arin’s newly found disconnect with Dan. He begins to pay more attention to the actual game and less to the commentary and less to Dan.  
  
He can’t afford to think about Dan.  
  
The wall gets thicker and thicker, and the texts begin to get spread farther and farther apart. The late night conversations disappear. So do Arin’s encouraging responses to Dan’s dwindling comments on his girlfriend—Ashley, Arin had learned. For some reason, the fact that the girl shared the first letter of her name with him only made his resentment towards her stronger. He feels the selfishness, the possessiveness, the need for Dan to belong to him and him alone getting stronger every hour of every day. There’s a sense of desperation, too, in the mix of emotions, like he isn’t as confident in their friendship as he believed he was. Like there’s a very real, almost probable chance that whatever chemistry they may have found within each other could disappear on a day rapidly arriving.  
  
The texts stop coming.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
Sometimes they see each other in the office. They pass one another from time to time and the looks get shorter, until Arin stops all together. There is, though, an instance that almost kills Arin entirely. He’s looking for Barry, some papers in hand, when Dan appears out of nowhere and walks in his direction. Arin’s eyes widen a fraction and he looks away, trying to steady his breathing. He subtly tries to veer farther to the right, making the distance between them wider, but when Dan comes almost parallel to him, he stops Arin with a hand on his arm.  
  
Arin freezes and almost loses his grip on both the papers and his emotions, shuddering when he feels Dan’s stare burning into the side of his head. He knows the older man is waiting, waiting for him to look at him, and won’t leave him until he does. So Arin forces his eyes from the papers to Dan’s hand, to his arm, to his shoulder, to his chin, to his cheek. To his eyes. And it’s one of the hardest things Arin has ever done, to meet Dan’s eyes for more than a second. They stand there, Arin’s breaths getting faster and faster and his heart beating louder and louder until it overwhelms him. Dan looks like he’s about to say something but Arin steps away, breaking Dan’s grip, and rushes off without a word.  
  
He doesn’t go back for the sheets of paper he dropped.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
Finally the day comes when it seems as if Dan has reached his breaking point. They’re wrapping up their session together—this time, they had been playing Wrath of Black Manta. Arin leans over to grab the bag of chips he had been eating, wanting to throw it in the trash and get the hell out of there as fast as he possibly can, but stiffens when Dan slaps a hand over his hand and stops him in his tracks.  
  
“Arin,” he says, his voice low and clipped and all the things Arin wishes he never had to hear.  
  
Arin doesn’t look up right away, instead inhaling shakily and staring at his knees. His heart is in his throat and his vision is tunneling and he thinks he’s about to throw up because he knows what’s coming next. And he doesn’t want to hear it, but he knows he has to or else he’s not ever gonna leave this place alive. “Yep?” answers Arin, still bent over.  
  
“Look at me, Arin.”  
  
Arin squeezes his eyes shut and makes a fist with his free hand until he thinks he’s about to draw blood.  
  
“Please, Arin. Please.”  
  
Arin lets go of his breath and sits up, his teeth clenched behind his tightly closed lips. Time slows down as he turns his head to look at Dan, almost breaking down as he does. When he sees the heartbreak and the grief written all over Dan’s face and piercing his eyes, Arin has to cover his mouth and grip his jaw to keep him from crying out because he looks so sad and so _lost_.  
  
Dan licks his lips and his eyes wander all over Arin’s face, trying to find the right words that might make this hopeless situation better even though there can’t possibly be a solution. Arin feels like he’s going to be sick, he knows he’ll be sick, but still he waits in silence.  
  
When Dan does finally talk, the air is sucked out of Arin’s lungs.  
  
“We’re still friends, right?”  
  
The dam breaks and it’s all Arin can do to keep the tears contained. He wants to cry so bad because he knows Dan feels it too. He feels like he’s going to lose Dan and Dan thinks he might lose Arin, all because Arin’s trying to hold on to him in all the wrong ways and because of that all he’s succeeded in doing is shove them apart. Dan’s eyes begin to water and so do Arin’s, and he doesn’t know which one of them is going to break first. He doesn’t answer right away and not because he doesn’t know what to say, but because he can’t find his voice.  
  
Slowly Arin turns lifts his hand from underneath Dan’s and laces their fingers between each other’s, both their grips becoming like iron the moment they are entwined. He scoots forward ever so slightly and holds Dan so, so tight as he reaches forward, his hand trembling as he lifts it to Dan’s face. He cups the older man’s chin and rubs his thumb over his cheek, staring into Dan’s eyes all the while. A violent tremor races through the couch as Dan shivers at Arin’s touch, closing his eyes briefly to let the feeling subside.  
  
A ball of lead sits in Arin’s throat as he strokes Dan softly, moving his hand to brush over the man’s lips. He shakes with the urge to close the distance, to open those lips and kiss him, kiss all these problems away and smother each other with this crazy all-consuming love that’s been rising like a fire within Arin. But something holds him back. Something holds him on the fence, preventing him from crossing that line.  
  
They’re close, so tantalizingly close now. Arin can feel Dan’s breath washing over his wrist and on his face, and he can see Dan’s eyelashes flutter when Arin holds him a bit tighter. Arin gazes at him, a fierce longing like none he had ever known setting over him for the man in his hands. He’s beautiful, he’s perfect, he’s all Arin ever wanted. But while stealing his heart may be what Arin wants to do, he knows that he cannot be the one to do it. Not now. Not like this. It isn’t his place to. It never was.  
  
A tear traces a line down Arin’s face as he releases Dan’s face and lets his hand fall between them, pulling back and feeling as if he is leaving his heart there, too. Dan stares at him, his eyes puzzled.  
  
“Of course, Danny,” Arin promises in a whisper at last, his voice cracking terribly as he slips his hand from Dan’s. “We’ll always be friends.”  
  
It’s a start.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
.  
  
_END_

**Author's Note:**

> Getting them in character is hard, especially since their dialogue during videos is always so random and kind of wanders a whole lot. Oh well. What's done is done...


End file.
